Her Time has come
(
Community : Story of Glory Hom)
Father' words,
Glory's Story,
Glory did not write a lot in her diary. The day of her departure, she actually felt good.
She said, " Daddy, when I leave, you and Mom must read my diary, I wrote down a lot of my physical and spiritual struggles."
She must have known that we would be extremely sad when she leaves us, but if we read about her physical and spiritual suffering, pain and struggles, we would understand and let her go in peace.
As I think about this more, I now understand why twice she told me, " Daddy, I am trying my very best, I have given my best!"
Glory did not want us to think that she had given up the struggle to live. It is only because this is the time to go, and no one can change her fate.
I have never seen her like this. She was so sick that her speech was incoherent. I left the room stealthily and went into the bathroom to cry. I knew she might not make it this time. I reminded myself that Glory needed my company, she must not see me like this. I went back and stroke her swollen legs. I listened to her while she struggled to speak in complete sentences. It seemed like she became a different person, one who was lost and yet very calm, very gentle. She was reminiscing her life when she was 12-13 years old......
All of a sudden, she asked me, "Daddy, do you see the ceiling tiles are opened?"
"How can that be?" I answered. "This is a special isolation room, even the air ventilation is especially filtered, how can the ceiling tiles be opened?"
Shortly after, she asked, "Daddy, is someone vacuuming outside the room? That noise is so loud in my ears! I heard a lot of sounds.....and I see 2 kids jumping around over my head..." As she spoke, she pointed to them, asking if I saw them as well.
"Maybe you are hallucinating from the side effects of the medication..." I comforted her.
Sometimes it looked like she was talking to someone, but I could not figure out what she was saying.
Then she snapped back and asked, " Daddy, what did I just say?" Did you hear me? It's weird, I was like the professor in 'Beautiful Mind'. I feel like I am living in two different worlds..."
She sounded bewildered because she was unsure of where she was.
She made the comment that I should have recorded what she was saying.
Her request that I should make a recording stemmed from a story I told her a while ago. When an elderly man from church was at his death bed, the doctor asked that his family come to his side. His son, who was a non-Christian, was on the plane, coming to see him. The father had been in a coma for a few days. It looked like the son might not make it there soon enough. The doctor thought that his time had come. All of a sudden, the father woke up, and asked the family to record what he had to say. The recording was for his non-Christian son. He knew that he might not have a chance to see his son. He wanted to tell of what he saw in his coma. He saw Jesus, and heaven. He requested Jesus to allow him to return, so he could personally tell his son to believe in Jesus. His speech too was kind of 'messy' .
I believe Glory must have taken a glimpse of the spiritual realm as well. In an instant, she could not express herself, and therefore reminded me that I should have recorded it. I did not understand a word she said. May be this is the heavenly tongues, the tongues of angels as described in the Bible. It is indeed difficult for one to put into human words a spiritual experience. Even Paul could not describe clearly what he saw in the third heaven. And John too was unclear, to the extent that we can hardly understand what he was describing.
Probably her spirit had left her body and entered the spiritual realm. Although she appeared lost, she was not afraid, nor did she seem unfamiliar with her circumstance. Instead, all of a sudden, she became very calm. She was no longer upset that she was confined to a bed. Her expression and her attitude had definitely changed. That was why I mistook this to be the side effects of her medication. In reality, side effects from medication only last for a few hours, not as long as two days.
She must have seen the place she would be going after her death.
She knew she would be leaving soon.
To me, she appeared to be like an angel, innocent, calm, joyful....
All along, Glory was good in imitating people.
When she first came to the States at the age of 7, she was the only Chinese in her school. Her teachers told us, because Glory could not speak English, she would imitate every thing her friends said, and everything they did. While her friends got upset and complained to their teachers, they also liked her a lot.
Today's sudden behavior could come from her encounter with angels. They might have had some interaction. She might be imitating the angels as though she was in school on her first day. Glory knew that she would be leaving soon. She saw her future place and the angels who would come for her soon.
On Sunday morning, she told me as soon as she saw me, "Daddy, last night, there were 20-30 people in my room. I was hallucinating, so the doctors and nurses all rushed into my room, a whole roomful of people..."
In reality, it was Saturday midnight, there were only a few medical staff on the entire floor, where would one find 20-30 people?
She must have seen not only the medical staff, but the angels coming for her, therefore 'a whole roomful of people'.
For the living, to die is a torture, but for the person who is dying, it is indeed a relief. For a lot of people who are about to face death, they clearly experience the sixth sense. Last week, a coworker who is responsible for the 'news corner' told me he could not understand why his wife had this sixth sense as well before her death. Some years back, he was invited to bring his wife along from Taiwan to China for a news interview program. Due to his work schedule, he would fly into China first, followed by his wife in two days. He was puzzled why his wife appeared so relunctant to leave him when they said their goodbyes, as though they would not see each other again. They were not newly weds. Moreover they would see each other again in two days. She was not ill, not in pain or in any suffering. When the wife wrote her mother, she said she would return to Taiwan on a certain day. My coworker saw her letter and laughed, saying, "No, not this date, our arrival back in Taiwan is 2 weeks later..."
As the story turns out, his wife's plane crashed. The date her body was flown back to Taiwan was the date she put in her letter for her mother. She did not change the date in her letter. She had a feeling her time of death had come.
Today, we all know that death will one day come upon us. But we cannot sense when that day will arrive. Or we may even resist the thought of that coming day. When we realize the time has come, what are we going to do about it?